Guest Post: Labor Day, 2026

Labor Day picnics, with political speeches, used to be a thing.

Tam Moore remembers them. They reflected the political energy of workers advocating for workers. Thank unions for the eight-hour workday, the two-day weekend, and worker safety rules.

I have a tiny memory of those Labor Day picnics myself.

My memory is of one of the Labor Day gatherings at TouVelle State Park, alongside the Rogue River about a mile and a half upriver from the family farm. My parents attended. U.S. Senator Wayne Morse spoke.The date was 1953 or 1954. I was either three or four years old. There was some kind of drawing for a raffle prize. Senator Morse, at the microphone, called for someone to pull the ticket out of the hat. He pointed to me. I pulled the ticket. I still remember the event and it changed me in one, tiny way I remember every month when I get a haircut.

I stood right next to him. I saw his face and his huge, bushy eyebrows. They looked like spiders to me, with huge black legs sticking out of his face. Scary! That is what I remember.

When I get haircuts today I chat with the stylist. I ask if they have ever heard of Senator Wayne Morse. They are young. The 1950s, '60s, and '70's are ancient history to them. None have heard of him, a disappointment since he was such a hero to me during the Vietnam era. I tell the stylist to trim my eyebrows, and I tell the story of scary old men with bushy eyebrows. 

Tam Moore is a veteran TV and print journalist, now in his tenth decade of life, looking good and still engaged with this community in multiple ways.

Tam Moore, TV journalist

Tam Moore at 90

Guest Post by Tam Moore

Labor Day 2026

I just got up from the breakfast table at my senior-living facility after a most enjoyable series of conversations remembering what Labor Day used to be. My recollections, both as a journalist and for a brief four-year term as a local government politician, are far different from those of my tablemates.

Labor Day, to me, was a big thing.

Not just a celebration of the working man and woman, or recognition of great historical events in U.S. history of organized labor –- Formation of a women worker’s association in 1843 at a Lowell, Mass. textile factory; the 1871 organizing of workers by Mary Harris “Mother” Jones after her dress shop was destroyed by the Chicago Fire; cigar-maker Samuel Gompers’ 1886 formation of skilled-workers unions as the American Federation of Labor. See AFL-CIO timeline.

My first job out of college in 1956 was in Eureka, California, as good a labor town as one could find, with organized longshoremen, millworkers, operating engineers, electrical and communication workers, carpenters and laborers. They celebrated with speeches and a big picnic in Sequoia Park. I, a starting broadcast news reporter, went along for the fun because political candidates for local and statewide California offices came to Sequoia Park every two years kicking off their campaigns for the November general election.

When I returned to broadcasting in 1976 after overseas duty with the U.S. Army, home became Medford, Oregon. The Central Labor Council held a huge picnic at TouVelle State Park every Labor Day.

Pencil, camera and microphone in hand, I was there listening to candidates for local and statewide Oregon offices.

When I moved briefly into broadcast management, part of my job dealt with unionized electrical workers. I respected the way labor leadership looked out not only for member wages but for working conditions, and shared management’s concern for worker safety.

During my brief four years as a Jackson County Commissioner, public employee labor unions were on the rise – and they cared about their members. One of my most significant ex-officio tasks during that time (1975-1979) was serving on the governing board of the Western Oregon Health Systems Agency (HSA). It was tasked with allocating on a regional basis the capital investment of local and federal grant money for the first magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) machines. That process was stymied for about a year until the Bay Area Hospital District in Coos Bay named one of its directors to the HSA board. He was also the business agent for the Longshoremen’s local. He knew how to negotiate. Within 75 days, all of those expensive machines had designated locations filling real regional medical demands.

This Labor Day, according to the state AFL-CIO, there are just three picnics – at Oaks Park in Portland, in Lane County and in Deschutes County. The Central Labor Councils, which used to organize regional celebrations, folded in 2015. Some became regional chapters of the  Oregon AFL-CIO.

Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data put 1989 as the high-water mark of union organization in Oregon, when 21.6 percent of the workforce paid union dues. By 2010 the percentage dropped to 16.2 and hit a low point of 13.5 in 2016. Last year Oregon had 283,000 union members, 15.1 percent of all wage and salary workers. Public sector unions dominate that total –education, state employees, local government employees and public safety workers. Health care union membership – nurses, behavioral health and long-term care membership is on the rise according to some sources but BLS doesn’t break out data in its 2025 Oregon report.

So Labor Day 2026 has come and gone. If you want to see a politician, turn on your TV or look in the margins of your social media feed. If you want someone with shared interest in your community. or skills to help negotiate a thorny public problem, you aren’t likely to find help at a picnic today celebrating a heritage which marked the first Monday in September since that big 1882 parade in New York City. Today at the federal level, there’s an acting secretary of labor after the Trump 2.0 appointee resigned under scandal. Acting Secretary Keith Sonderling celebrated with a press release highlighting the August jobs report and by visiting workers at a Westin resort and spa in Las Vegas.

The rest of us are on our own.

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